Memory
by cellotlix
Summary: "I missed you," Shepard said, her voice thick. "You're standing right here, and I still miss you." Kaidan and Shepard remember what's important. Mid ME3, smut, oneshot.


**AN: Been kind of a rough day, so I thought I'd distract myself with some shenko smut. Kindly note the rating, and please enjoy!**

Kaidan rubbed his brow and did his honest best to suppress the throbbing headache making havoc in the vicinity of his temples. The shuttle shuddered around them, jostling his weary bones, and as if taking his exhaustion as a challenge, his migraine sent a hot tendril of pain lacing through his skull. Defeated, he let his head fall back on the bulkhead behind him. This one was settling in for the long haul.

Across from him, Shepard folded her arms over her chest, visibly seething. The heat of her anger was a nearly physical presence in the shuttle, the air thick with it. He could see her temper plain as day on her face, the corners of her lips twitching downward, smudged with dirt and blood.

"You going to tell me what's bugging you?" he asked her.

"No," was her short reply.

"It wasn't anything I did, was it?"

"No."

Well, if she was in the mood to be unhelpful and irritating, far be it from him to get in her way. He decided to shut up; her mood, his migraine, and the mission they'd just finished made an unpleasant combination.

"Kaidan?" she said after a while.

"Hm?"

She sighed and her head fell forward, her hair masking her features. "I'm sorry."

"Don't worry about it."

"Just . . . you think they'd have listened, you know? Only so many times you can blast a call to evac."

So that's what she was upset about. He'd had a suspicion, but didn't like to guess without definitive affirmation. "You're right."

"Still . . . we got the civilians in the end. That's something."

"They can't all be home runs," he equivocated.

"I guess not," she allowed, but he knew that she wished that they could be.

He thought the way she pushed her dirty hair behind her ears was almost tender, and when she looked up at him from below her lashes, her gaze somehow managed to be hard and vulnerable all at once. A brave part of him wondered if she looked at him the same way, with the same stunned reverence, even when he was coated in grime and blood and sour enough to choke on.

"I thought it would get easier," she said softly, still watching him.

"What?"

But she said no more, letting her head fall forward again, her hair slipping from behind her ear and obscuring her features. He thought he caught a glimpse of color on her cheeks, and wondered if she was truly as removed as she tried to be.

Not long after, the shuttle docked with the Normandy. He thudded onto the deck, Shepard not far behind him. To his relief, the shuttle bay was completely empty; even the ever-present Cortez had waved at them once before locking down the shuttle and heading off in the direction of his bunk. For the first time in what seemed like weeks, they were alone.

Maybe it had been weeks. Time had gone funny since he'd rejoined the Normandy.

That they were alone was a fact that was not lost on Shepard. She pulled at the buckles of her armor in a businesslike, proprietary way, but he saw that her back was unnaturally straight as she removed piece by piece, her skin dewy with sweat. He saw that her hands trembled as she stowed the pieces and disassembled her guns.

What had they said to each other the last time they'd been alone? Hard words. Accusations. The name of Cerberus on his tongue, the stark angle of her brows over livid eyes. They'd muttered half-formed apologies the next day in mess, but the issue had never really been resolved.

And as he looked at her stow the pieces of her armor, the glistening skin of her muscles and arms catching the light of the shuttle bay, he saw that she was human and she was Shepard. It came as some surprise to remember that he loved her, as much as a person could love another person.

She ran one hand through her damp hair and leaned against her locker, her head resting on her forearm. She sighed. "Kaidan?"

"Yeah, Shepard?"

"Don't go just yet."

"I wasn't planning on it."

She turned, and there was a small question in her eyes, but she blinked it away. "I just . . . shit, this is hard."

He waited.

"I wanted to say I was sorry. I said some things . . . I didn't mean. Some things I _don't _mean, and I never could, even when I'm so mad at you I could knock you across the room."

"You expect being mad at me like that will be a regular occurrence?"

"I don't think so," she said. "Not if I can help it, anyway." A little smile curved her lips. "Don't know how much of that is up to me, though. I am apparently a very angry person."

"You weren't before."

She hesitated, hurt clouding in her eyes, and he could have kicked himself. What a stupid thing to say. Of course she wasn't before – were any of them as they had been before the Reapers? Before she had died and been pieced together on a slab by Cerberus, nerve by nerve, bones and blood? "I suppose."

"I'm sorry, Shepard."

She shook her head, and when she looked up at him once again, he felt oddly as if she had struck him. "It's fine. My point is, Kaidan, that I'm . . . well, I'm glad you're here again. I'm glad you still wanted to be here on the Normandy, even after everything that happened. Even after . . . well. You know."

He cleared his throat. "Yeah."

Yeah, he knew. Those heady days of chasing Saren, dancing slow and stupid circles around the other. The chase, the surrender, the release. A thousand times spent entwined after, in a thousand places. The promise made, the promise broken. Knowing she was dead, and he might as well have been too.

"It's so strange," she admitted, pacing back and forth a little. "That I still remember those days like they only just happened. I thought that memory would be a little shoddy after they brought me back, but if anything it's sharp as a razor. I can remember exactly how many times we – we told each other how we felt. Back then."

Only back then?

"I – god, this is stupid to admit. Because you already know – that's the clincher. You already know all of this. But . . . it never really changed for me, you know? Maybe – maybe it did for you, when I was dead, or when you were teaching your kids and I was under house arrest, but for me . . . I don't know." She balled her fists at her sides, and he saw that they shook. "Never mind."

He swallowed the hard lump in his throat, and pushed away what he knew he should admit – what he should scream, to make clear and perfect. "I'm sorry too," he said, and the words were so insufficient as to be completely inappropriate.

She nodded, jerkily. "Right," she whispered, and he heard a rough note of shame in her voice. "Right."

It was only after she turned on her heel and strode to the elevator that he realized what had happened, how he had blundered things yet again. She had made herself bluntly, baldly clear, and he'd hid behind apologies. "Shepard, wait," he called, struggling to draw even with her.

"Yeah?"

"I – I am sorry. That's the crux of it. I was a jackass, and you were – you were you. I should have seen that, you know? I should have known it. I would have known it, if I hadn't had my head up my ass."

She smiled a little, and he knew that he'd say any stupid, self-effacing thing if it meant bringing her even a small piece of happiness. "That's one way of putting it."

"And I thought . . . I don't know. I thought this would have been clear to you too."

"I still can't read your mind, you know."

"I thought you could. I wished you could."

"Wouldn't that be kind of boring?"

"It would be easier. You would know exactly how I felt, and I wouldn't have to stumble over the wrong words in pursuit of the right ones."

She smiled a little more brightly. "Maybe I like watching you stumble toward the truth. It's good for you. Grounding. Makes you human."

"Sometimes I'm not so sure that's a good thing."

"Listen to you! When did you get so cynical?"

He saw she realized the answer almost as soon as she'd spoken the words, realization dawning on her tired, beautiful features. "I was different, when I was younger, I guess," he said quietly.

"Not that much different," she told him. "You're the same in all the important ways. All the best ways."

"Ha. Good one."

"I mean it!"

And he couldn't keep from smiling a little himself. "Like what ways?"

"Like you're still solid and reliable as I remember. You keep a cool head when it matters. You care, still, even though I wonder sometimes if you wished you didn't." She smirked a little. "You wear that integrity on your chest like a badge."

"I have scruples. Those are good things to have."

"Sure, sure," she allowed, stifling a laugh. "Dire and necessary."

He scowled. "Here I was attempting to make good with you, and you'd rather poke fun at me."

He knew he'd said something wrong, even though he didn't immediately know what it was. Her smile was pasted on like a mask, and something broke behind her eyes. "I . . . it's nice to smile, though. If I don't poke fun at you, I don't know if I ever would."

He struggled for something to say. "I – I didn't mean –"

"Yeah, I know." She fell silent, chewing at her lip. "Am I the same as you remember?"

"In the important ways," he said. "The precious ways."

"Precious, huh?"

"I don't see it so often anymore, but you still have that weird sense of humor," he said, smiling a little. "You still chew the inside of your cheek when you're upset or nervous. You can't cook for crap. You pick at your nails. You still shut down and practically become a different person when you're on a mission, though these days I don't see you breaking out of that as much anymore. Like every day is a mission for you, and you're forgetting how to go back to yourself."

He'd cut too close. She angled away from him, and he saw that her shadowed eyes were bright, catching the light of the shuttle bay oddly. "Maybe I am forgetting," she said quietly.

Without thinking, he bridged the breach between them and slowly traced the angle of her cheek with his hand, and it stunned him how much it was like he remembered; the sensation of her skin, smooth and tight, unburdened by age, the exactly pattern of the freckles that dotted her cheekbone. A part of him expected her to draw away from his touch, but she did not; instead, she leaned into it and closed her eyes, and when she sighed, it trembled with an odd relief he felt himself.

"I missed you," she said, her voice thick. "You're standing right here, and I still miss you."

He tried to swallow again, but it was in vain. An echoed reply stuck in his throat, those same words that encompassed the truth, and he couldn't move them. He'd missed her more than he knew how to say, and now that she was so close and so real – _and hurting – _he couldn't speak. But he drew her closer and slid one arm around her waist, and she was so much like he remembered that it filled him with a strange, speechless ache; a kind of thrum, vital and low as a heartbeat.

With a hard gasp, he brought his lips to hers and prayed to god that he wasn't misreading this whole naked conversation. But her hands slid into his hair, just below the scar from his implant, and he relished that sensation, one that he had gone so long without, one that he thought he'd never feel again.

He was beyond control now – kissing her more deeply, savoring the taste of her lips, the salt on her skin from sweat and tears. When she pulled him closer, it was exactly as he remembered; a lifetime ago. When she moaned under his lips, he knew that moan from his own memories, which suddenly had the flimsy feel of paper; no flesh and blood and bone to them.

Abruptly, she pulled away. Her eyes were huge, glassy with want, subtle and sweet surprise. "Come with me," she said softly.

"What?"

A ghost of a smile pulled at her lips. "I'm not going to fuck you on the floor," she said. "Or the wall."

"Why the hell not?"

"It's not comfortable," she said, grinning as she pulled him into the elevator. "You should want me to be comfortable."

"Why is that, huh?"

"I'm generous when I'm comfortable."

He tried to respond, but she was kissing him again, and he lost the will to debate the matter fully. He wound his hand in her hair and tilted her head gently back, trailing kisses along the curve of her neck, the beautiful angle of her jaw, and he thought he would always remember that exact sound she made – half laughter, half wanting sigh.

She shoved him out of the elevator when they hit her floor and he pulled her along, so that they were a tumbling, tripping, mess of nonsense as they crashed into her room until she finally pushed him against the wall with enough force to knock the breath out of him. This was as he remembered, too – that cunning, predatory half-grin that she flashed him when she saw something she wanted, the way she would trail her fingers up the length of his body until he trembled from the force of wanting her – wanting and not having, the utter insanity of it –

"You'd think it's been a few years," she whispered in his ear, her breath warming his neck, her hands curling around the length of him, the wanting girth.

"Shut – oh, god," he moaned.

He thought maybe they'd draw it out, play a little – like in Chicago, when they'd had nothing to do all day but make love, drunk and stupid on each other. But there was an edge of desperation in him now, and he felt that if he waited any longer he would pull apart at the seams, the effort of holding together far too much to shoulder under the circumstances. She was too beautiful and – and alive! He was still wrapping his head around that part.

They undressed one another with frenzied, nearly comical haste. He ripped her shirt as he yanked it over her head before attacking her bra – the usual foe – but this time he didn't wait to pull it off properly, like he would have in a different time; he yanked that off too, the little clasps pulling apart and scattering over the floor.

For her part, she stripped him with military efficiency – like he was a gun, not a man; laid bare on a table. The comparison might have been laughable, in a different place.

And it was hard, and rough, and desperate, but only at first. When he pulled her close again, they did nothing except for savor the feel of each other, pressed skin to skin until there was no distance at all between them, until they might have been one entity, except for one final detail.

"Kaidan," she whispered, and he knew that she was learned how to say his name in this place again – not the bark of a command, or the edge of a reproach, but the soft sigh of a plea, thrumming with desire and the prospect of surrender.

He laid her on the bed with tenderness he'd forgotten he knew – almost a habit forged by another man in another life. It wasn't true, though; this was his. This remembrance. There was no need to reconcile two women into one; she'd been just the same Shepard he'd always known, the same woman that he loved more than he knew how to say, even today – even now.

He framed her lips with a kiss. He knelt between her thighs like a prayer. When he plunged into her, it was with a cry that they shared.

And this – oh, god; this. This was better than memory; those cheap, flimsy things. This was real and vital and well beyond his meager ability to describe or even understand. The shape of her mouth against his, the patterns that her hands shaped in his skin, as if she molded him to life from clay. The exact tone of her voice, pitched breathy low, soaring higher as he brought her up and over in all the ways that he knew by something beyond rote, or even instinct. This was how it was meant to be – a rhythm that they knew by heart, the push-you pull-me give and take that they'd perfected before.

And it was perfect. She laughed under him when he laughed, and cried out as he did. She was there when he hovered low over her body, so that with each powerful thrust her breasts brushed against his own chest, nipples hardened by desire and the cold. He brought his mouth to them, and savored the way she bent into him, the muscles sliding and contracting, like a house of mirrors.

"Kaidan," she breathed. "God –"

When he came, though, she kept her eyes on him, and he thought that he might lose himself in their depths. He thought that he might want to live there.

He'd thought, even when he'd known she was alive, that they would never find their way back this place, where the only space between them was the distance between an inhale and an exhale. He thought that there was only remembrance for them now; cold and flat, tinged with regret. It was a joy beyond any he'd known that now – in this stark, bare place beyond memory – he was free from it.


End file.
